Space. Never mind how we got there, but do mind that there are two warring factions: the Blood Legion and the Blue Army. Now I don’t exactly know whose army the Blue Army is, but I’m sure they could’ve made up a better name than the Blue Army for their army.

SuperNova: Galactic Wars is a mediocre representation of a form of “galactic chess” which tries to toss in some sort of strategy, and “arcade fun” with real-time battles. However, the end package ends up becoming something not worth too much of your time, nor will it even take up that much on the other hand either.

Graphics: What is that? Oh, It’s a spaceship…I think…
In terms of graphics, the game’s menu screens have more detail than the amount of detail in-game ships have. Graphics are not that good at all, but still manage to get the job done without having any bad memories of it. Everything is smooth for the most part, but there isn’t any animation to really speak of except for lasers going in a straight line and a picture of a missile moving around, or a ship glowing with a shield. The game boasts no lag time, however.

Music: This is a one song soundtrack
When it comes to sound, it is not noticeable at all except during the menu screen. The music is pretty boring, and doesn’t exactly fulfill much more than being a fill-in for the sake of something actually being there. I’m pretty sure that the same song is used repeatedly through the whole game in all the different situations you go through.

Galactic Chess, a wonderful premise! Not really…
The whole premise of the game is that there’s a blue team and a red team, and they’re fighting. Each side has unique ships, in different classifications, such as scout, cruiser, battleship, and interceptor. Each side has their own repertoire of ships to boast, each with somewhat cool names and somewhat cool designs. You will notice by playing the game that each side have ships mostly named after a classification of certain things that have some sort of relation with another. A few of the Blue Army’s ship names are Tornado, Shark, Dolphin, Stinger, Scarab, Eagle, and Arrow, while the Blood Legion’s ships are named Spinner, Ogre, Crab, Panthera, Turtle and Lightning.

It is pretty obvious what each ship’s counterparts are, by the kind of weaponry they use. This is simply because of balance issues, and either side really doesn’t have much more to offer over the other side, other than just a variety in the style of ships and what each weapon may be paired with. There are a few unique weapons to particular ships, but these will have counterparts as well. The best part about this game is the pure variety of the ships that have been included in the game for each side.

While not totally boring, SuperNova does deliver a somewhat amusing experience with the real-time battles that can only be accurately described as an Asteroids-type of game, except there is another ship that you duel with. However, the whole game isn’t exactly like this. You play a form of Chess on a map with a bunch of hexagonal spaces that are occupied by your ships and your opponent’s ships. You are usually on one side while your opponents are on the other.

The game is based around turns when it comes to how the game is structured. You are allowed to make only one action during your turn before you give your opponent a chance to do something. Every turn you get to move, repair, or buy a new ship. Different challenges are given that make you have to use your turns wisely, or else you’ll fail the mission.

While you’re in Chess board mode, you can spend “credits” to repair ships that have been dealt damage during the real-time battles, or buy new ships. New ships can only be bought when one of your ships are occupying a planet, with the most basic ship costing ten credits (each ship above it costing ten more). When you have a ship occupying a “Gaia” you acquire credits depending on the planets wealth. You also acquire credits during real-time battles, as they’re just pieces of different colored (and valued) gook flying around on the game screen.

To enter a real-time battle from the Chess board mode, a ship must land on top of a square that has another ship from the opposing army on it. As I said before, this mode is most closely described as an Asteroids-type of game where you duel with an enemy instead. Though you may not actually get much frustration out of it unless you adjust the computer’s difficulty really high, it is not a very involving feature of the game, nor is anything else about the game once you think about it. In the real-time battle screen, you’re presented a map of the area you’re allowed to fight in (I say allow because there’s a wall surrounding it), randomly flying around asteroids and rocks, and gook credit things. You fly around shooting things and that’s basically it. You can acquire power ups by destroying the asteroids and fight your opponent. Fighting your opponent becomes very annoying and long because it is not too much fun at all. Its so much easier if you are able to just ram into your opponent, and destroy it like that instead of using your guns. Unless of course your opponent has more hit points left, then you would use more than one of your ships to kill it.

In terms of actually playing the game, that is all that the game has to offer.

Story? What story?
Unfortunately, there is a very boring story mode in which you have no actual reason for fighting the other side other than the fact that you’re trying to do something and they’re not allowing you to do it. The “story” is delivered through text, and you only see one person representing the other side. The graphics used to make the people are actually nice, but that’s probably because the rest of the game is pretty much crap.

There are about ten missions you have to go through, each forcing you to exhibit some sort of strategy (or make you retry the level over and over until you get lucky), which ends up being not very hard to figure out at all. Once you actually beat the game you get nothing more than a “congratulations, you helped us out” sort of thing, and that’s about it. No extras, no real incentive for ever playing the game again after beating it for each side. Sure there’s the “quick battle” option but its just the same boring game again.

Though there are two campaigns you can go on, one for each side (each with different stories), it will not take you that long to complete either campaign. It took me a little under an hour to complete the Blue Army’s campaign, and half of the Blood Legion’s.

Overall Thoughts
SuperNova: Galactic Wars should not mislead you into thinking there is more than one war. There is only one war, and it’s extremely sad, intensely boring, and not worth your time at all. One would think that the game’s price tag of $19.95 (online) would be comparable to paying a hundred dollars for a new pair of underwear. Once you play this game, you won’t go back to it, as it has nothing more to offer you other than a semi-hot-looking Queen of the Blood Legion that gives you orders to kill the blue guys on the map.